News

SHINE Anniversary - a Service-Learning Roadshow

SHINE is ten years old! Without fanfare, the tutorial keeps doing what it does best – bringing together college students and immigrants for a two-way learning exchange. This tenth anniversary marks a year of sharing our model locally, nationally, and internationally.

In January, we kicked off the new year by working with Punahou School. We educated the high school juniors about the immigrant communities in Hawaii and about our SHINE tutorial. The students then developed posters to recruit volunteers for the program, and teacher John Cheever helped to secure a Weinberg “Educating the Heart” Grant which has been key in supporting our efforts.

For Chaminade’s Service-Learning Day in February, Kehau Yamaguchi, our 2005 “star volunteer,” prepared a display that sparked conversation about the opportunity for students to get involved.

Meanwhile, student coordinator Celia Pang was learning about service and leadership in a new business course on non-profit management. She presented SHINE and its model of student leadership at the Statewide Service-Learning Conference in March. Then, in April, we took an expanded version of the presentation to Washington. In the Continuums of Service Conference that took place in Bellevue, our session engaged students and faculty from all over the nation.

On the way to Washington, Wayne Tanna, Richard Kido, and Candice Sakuda highlighted SHINE in part of a presentation for the WASC Conference in Irvine, California. Faculty and administrators requested use of the materials they presented, hoping to implement our model in their own communities.

Back at home, our reflective articles on the experiences appeared in the Network of Volunteer Leaders’ Newsletter and the Chaminade Quarterly Magazine. The service-learning infrastructure that was central in Kido, Tanna, and Sakuda’s WASC presentation became the highlight of Sakuda’s application for the President’s National Service Honor Roll. We were chosen as finalists for the Excellence in Service award, from over 500 other institutions applying!

Bryan Man kept the momentum of the tutorial going strong, helping to train new tutors, driving a van to shuttle them to Kukui Gardens, and even tutoring the Chinese elders. He took a break to present SHINE to people from all over the world, at the International Service-Learning Research Conference in Portland, Oregon in October.

Thanks to all our partners - Kukui Gardens, Sui Wah School, the Filipino Community Center, UH-Manoa, Chaminade University, KCC, Michigan State, Punahou School, the Weinberg Foundation, and each of our wonderfully dedicated student coordinators. Through all of us working collaboratively, the tutorial program has made a lasting impression on the service-learning scene at our colleges and universities all over the nation, as well as on the immigrant community here at home. Here’s to ten more years!